How I learned to wake up early

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Do you consider yourself an owl or a lark? All my life I considered myself an owl, but the experiment that I conducted allowed me to wake up in the morning and not feel like a victim of torture.

I never liked morning. Not at school, not at university. I am one of the so-called owls who like to wake up for dinner, and fall asleep, meeting the dawn. It's hard for me to prove that owls and larks are one of the myths that we have imposed on ourselves, but I will tell you how I taught myself to wake up early in the morning and not feel like 80 kilograms of rotten vegetables.

I do not want to go into scientific definitions, calculating my biorhythms and other very useful, but complicated things. I just want to tell you about a small experiment that I conducted and which, fortunately, ended successfully.

My sleep schedule for the past few years has been this: 10 months of the year, when I was studying, I woke up at 7 o'clock in the morning, and fell asleep when I have to. This could have happened at 11 pm, or it could have happened towards morning. Student life, you understand.

Unsurprisingly, by the weekend my only desire was to get to bed and never get out of it. And so I lived: five days a week experiencing hell in the morning, and the remaining two days enjoying the rest, which ended so soon.

But everything was destined to change. And the changes could have come much earlier, if I had made up my mind earlier, but it seemed to me that it was absolutely normal to feel like shit in the morning. After all, half the globe experiences the same.

I'm not sure if this brilliant idea came to my mind or I once found it and it was put on hold, but it worked anyway. So, to the point.

Experiment

I have worked out only two rules. First, I determined the time at which I want to wake up each day. For me it was 7 o'clock in the morning. Secondly, I decided to go to bed only when I want to. It doesn't matter if it's 9 pm or 3 am, if I don't want to sleep, I will read, watch movies or work, but not lie in bed thinking about the brown table I once saw in a cafe, dolphins, crickets that publish strange sounds, and that tomorrow you need to get up early, and I just can not sleep.

It was only hard for the first few days. Falling asleep when you really want it is great, but waking up after 4-5 hours of sleep is not very good. I decided to listen to my feelings and watch when I feel like going to bed. At first, times ranged from 11 pm to 2 am. Literally a few days later, I began to fall asleep earlier and I went to bed at 10-11 o'clock. Surprisingly, my "owl" instincts disappeared, and it became quite comfortable to get up at 7 am. Of course, the first few minutes in the morning were tough, but then it all came together.

Moreover, I got much more energy, and most importantly, time. If before I could not find time for personal affairs, now I had at my disposal several free hours, which I could spend as I liked.

Conclusion

To summarize, and especially for those who do not like to read long texts, but immediately strive to get to the point:

1. Decide what time you want to wake up each day.
2. Fall asleep only when you feel like it, and do not pay attention to the time.
3. Before going to bed, do not engage in active activities, it is better to read a book or watch a calm movie.

I almost forgot: at the time you choose, you will have to wake up even on weekends. However, after two weeks it will no longer bother you. This simple experiment helped me to retrain from an owl to a lark (if they do exist), and, I hope, will help you. I still listen to my own feelings and write about them in. If you're interested, read it.

If you decide to conduct an experiment on yourself, tell us in the comments what came of it!